Pop Quiz
What historian wrote: “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”?
What economist sad: “When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”?
What President said: “For in a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men by force or threat of force could long defy the commands of our court and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ, and no citizen would be safe from his neighbors.”?
What philosopher said: “At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.”?
Answers at the end of this post.
In 1903 Theodore Roosevelt said: “No man is above the law, and no man is below it.” The Democratic Party, circa 2025, has amended Roosevelt’s truism to read: Donald Trump not above the law, everyone else not so much. We have seamlessly moved into a politically driven prostitution of the law.
Article VI of our Constitution makes clear the importance of the law: “The Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made In Pursuance thereof…shall be the supreme Law of the Land…and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby.”. This proposition is the cornerstone of our civil society.
That proposition also requires that the law be applied even handedly and consistently. However, in America today we must deal with a political class that uses the law as a tool to advance a specific agenda. Laws are ignored or not enforced and this puts people at risk. On any given weekend in Chicago between 4 and 10 young Black males are murdered and elected officials fight any effort to save those lives.
And that is the tip of the iceberg…
During the four year government shutdown, aka the Biden administration, we witnessed the unbridled growth of a societal indifference toward enforcement of the law, Worse the Left has encouraged an open disrespect for the law. Jasmine Crockett, a wellspring of ignorance and stupidity, actually said out loud: “Just because someone has committed a crime, it doesn’t make them a criminal.” Somehow she acquired a law degree!
The Keystone Kops of Team Biden actively encouraged the illegal entry of between 15 and 20 million foreign nationals into the United States. Are we to assume that each of these trespassers is “above the law”? And what message do we send to the general population when the government disregards not only the law but its Constitutional obligation to protect the nation?
The Left has managed to turn the enforcement of the law into a political food fight. If there was a total solar eclipse and the country was plunged into complete darkness the ignorami that comprise the “leadership” of the Democratic Party would blame King Donald I for turning the lights off. Then the nattering nabobs of negativity, aka the Left wing media, would demand that he do his best imitation of King Canute and make it end. Based on this sort of ignorance the Democrats would unleash a horde of Leticia James, Fani Willis and Jack Smith types to abuse the law to punish Trump’s failure to end climate change, the Israeli occupation of Israel and toxic masculinity. Such baseless lawfare undermines the integrity of the entire legal system.
Let’s review the bidding…
Leticia James sues Trump for mortgage fraud. She is celebrated as a hero of the fatherland. Letitia James is subsequently indicted for mortgage fraud and it is treated as political retaliation with a pinch is racial animus. Is Ms. James above the law?
Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro are arrested and jailed for failing to respond to Congressional subpoenas. Navarro is forcibly dragged off a plane in leg irons for this offense. James Comey, John Brennan and Christopher Wray lied serially to Congress, i.e. committed perjury, and any investigation of their numerous well-documented offenses is described as political revenge. They are victims of King Donald’s need for retribution. It is blasphemy to suggest that the meritless charges against Bannon and Navarro are evidence of political bias. Are Comey, Brennan and Wray above the law?
The FBI, working hand in glove with the DOJ, raids Mar-a-Lago in a Bob Fosse production complete with media coverage. They bring props to create the impression that they have uncovered the mother lode of classified documents and they rifle Barron Trump’s bedroom and Melania’s dresser perhaps believing the nuclear launch codes were secreted amongst her undergarments. The Democrats were dripping with moral outrage. Spoiler alert…nothing was found. Is the FBI above the law?
By way of contrast we learn that Joe Biden has splashed classified documents all over Delaware and Pennsylvania, Some documents may have been used as coasters to protect the Stickley coffee tables. Restricted documents are in a garage which is routinely accessed by Hunter Biden, who has no government clearance. Hilliary Clinton deletes 35,000 subpoenaed documents, many classified, from an unauthorized personal server. If one has the temerity to suggest that these good folks should be prosecuted the Left goes straight to Defcon 1 howling about political retaliation. Are Biden and Hilliary above the law?
Craig Livingstone, a member of Hilliary’s staff when she was the First Virago, was caught with 700 raw data FBI files, every one of them involving Republicans (what were the odds?), and no legal action was taken against either Livingstone or his boss. Does the name Kevin Clinesmith ring a bell? This is the FBI attorney who altered a document submitted by the CIA regarding the activities of Carter Page. This was done to secure a FISA warrant to spy on Page. Clinesmith added the word “NOT” to a declarative statement which, one might argue, changed its meaning. He is a reminder that 50% of the lawyers in the US graduated in the bottom half of their class. He was not disbarred let alone dragged off an airplane in shackles. Are Livingstone and Clinesmith above the law?
Even murder, which is unarguably a felony, the opinion of Ms. Crockett notwithstanding, is being subjected to Marcusian linguistic therapy. Luigi Mangione, America’s favorite spoiled brat, is the object of sexual fantasies by AWFEL’s from coast to coast. If he manages to avoid execution he will, no doubt, be retired to stud. The crazed individual who murdered the Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte is excused by Vann Jones as a person in pain because America turned its back on him. Please ignore the body on the train floor. Let’s Go Brandon Johnson and JB Pritsker, stunt double for the Pillsbury Dough Boy, dismiss the slaughter of young Black men in Chicago as a chimera, sort of like Antifa. Are Luigi and Decarlos Brown above the law?
It has now been admitted that employees of the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Authority (FEMA) were instructed to withhold support for victims of weather disasters who had MAGA or Trump signs on their damaged properties. What you don’t hear is the deafening silence of the Democrats and the media on the subject, Is FEMA above the law?
Imagine the outcry if it were discovered that a Federal relief agency had been instructed to withhold support to victims of a disaster who displayed pride flags or posters.. It would have been worse than the rioting that occurred after George Floyd’s death by overdose. Speaking of which how many rioters in Kenosha or Washington DC in 2020 were arrested, tried and incarcerated. The correct answer is zero. Compare that to the draconian response to the the January 6 kerfuffle which included a totally unwarranted capture of the cell phone records of everyone within 30 miles of the Capitol on that date. Are certain anarchic agitators above the law while others are not?
Compliance with the Constitution and all duly enacted Federal, state and local laws is essential to the stability of our civil society. When compliance becomes optional, when the laws are randomly and irregularly enforced, when enforcement decisions are politically motivated, when citizens are allowed to steal up to $950 from any retail outlet with no accountability…we will devolve into a non-fiction version of the The Camp of the Saints. If Mamdani wins this week Manhattan will be the setting for Lord of the Flies, Part Deux.
We may succeed in making the words of Mr. Bumble in Charles Dickens Oliver Twist come true…“If the law supposes that,’ said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass–a idiot.”
Answers to the pop quiz:
What historian wrote: “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”? Edward Gibbon, author of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
What economist sad: “When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”? Frederic Bastiat
What President said: “For in a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men by force or threat of force could long defy the commands of our court and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ, and no citizen would be safe from his neighbors.”? John Kennedy
What philosopher said: “At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.”? Aristotle
Deborah
Opening this post and seeing The Law is an Ass (its equivalent) was startling, in that I have used that descriptor in two or three situations in my own life lately. It is a fun idea to examine.
Your post as always presents examples at the heart of the matter, in this case at the very heart of how this country is defined and is at this time, I believe, most threatened.
Among the points I share with those who express to me the idiotic notion that Trump is a threat to democracy is this: The only individuals who can write, rescind, amend, or in any way improve the laws of the land are elected legislators, across the whole great span of power from federal to town councils. Today many of those legislators — somehow it seems mostly Democrats ?! — at both federal and state levels, instead of fulfilling their elected role by their best light, are instructing citizens to break the law. If the only citizens charged with making and/or improving the laws are encouraging the breaking of them, our Constitution is mocked not upheld.
This will become overlong, but I will provide two examples of other thoughts I share on this subject:
FIRST
In September I attended an annual meeting in California, among dozens of people I truly love and respect, whom have known for many decades, and with whom I share my deeply loved faith. Warning: Uh….most of them are Californians, thus inherently challenged by any attempt at civilian logic.
At lunch one of them, a teacher, reported that she’d received a call from a student saying her father had been picked up by ICE. Sad for sure, much clucking around the table. I said, “I’d guess it’s a sanctuary city.” She looked puzzled, then, “Probably, yes.” I noted that in normal cities, ICE removes violent illegal alien criminals by working with the police and picking them up at the jails. Because sanctuary cities refuse to incarcerate them, ICE must go into the population. I stated specifically, “This administration is determined to remove violent illegal aliens from the country. At this time illegals with no other criminal record are not on their radar screen. However, the law requires that ICE arrest illegals, no matter their “record,” if they come upon them. They are thus at far greater risk in sanctuary cities.
My friends sat in stunned silence of course. Facts are not usually part of their lunch breaks, or indeed any sort political discourse,
SECOND
Driving past “Save Democracy” signs in a small city near where I live, I stopped to ask about its goal. Answer: Stop Trump.
I reminded them that my option was Kamala Harris. One of two women setting up the protest said that was beside the point. I asked whether I had missed something — was Abraham Lincoln running? or George Washington? or Dwight Eisenhower? She looked stymied, so I went for the usual, “What about Kamala Harris do you admire?” That’s a stinker of course, because her only charm to this woman was likely that she doesn’t have one of those things hanging between her legs.
I mentioned a few items of concern to me:
…I care a lot about children, and KH had not once in my hearing mentioned the 300,000 children lost going unaccompanied through the oopen border; that many are now in the sex trade, some in hard labor, some dead, only a small fraction likely safe in good homes. She was mute.
…100,000 citizens died of fentynl poisoning in 2023 alone. Mute.
…KH kept men who had earned parole in prison so they could clean CA highways. Mute.
…KH established a bail fund so those destroying our cities several summers ago could get out and destroy more. Mute.
…This candidate for our highest office, a lawyer, encourages people who break the law. Mute.
Finally, another comment in an area important to me related to law:
Bryce wrote: “On any given weekend in Chicago between 4 and 10 young Black males are murdered and elected officials fight any effort to save those lives.”
Yes. And sadly, so do many in that community.
In the 1990’s, above 80% of crime in Chicago was Black-on-Black crime. By the ’90s it was forbidden to publish that number openly.
In 1991 my husband was on a panel at a Law and Society international conference in Amsterdam. All academics. The panel’s focus was some aspect of the law and rape — something like how the law and its application responded to rape. He came back to the hotel utterly mystified by the comments of a Black female panelist, whose position was that there is no rape in the Black community. At that time we lived in Chicago. Before becoming a Prof, he had had extensive experience in criminal justice practice in the NYPD and in the IBI — Illinois Bureau of Investigation — as well as in specific research in how rape was processed in the Chicago PD.) That panelist’s reasoning, as I recall his report to me, was that slavery had so metaphorically castrated the Black man that 130 years later he had a right to satisfy his sexual urges in his community with impunity.
Our “disadvantaged” youth, in my opinion formed in over four decades working with the incarcerated in the prison ministry, are being let down by every public and/or governmental agency and institution supposedly there to encourage individual freedom under the law; and also by every private entity except individual families who somehow overcome the crushing nonsense of the “no snitch” culture, the feminist hatred of men, and boys raising each other because that’s all they have.
My closest male friend is a Black ex-con, abandoned by his family (in Chicago) when he was four, brutalized by three of four foster families, actually lived under a bridge for over a year when he was around 10 or 11 after running away from daily beatings. Four dogs waved their tails when he returned “home” under the bridge, and he quickly determined that dogs were nicer than people. That foster family did not report him missing, enjoying the check more than his company. He estimated that 90+% of the men in his last halfway house had no fathers, uncles, or grandfathers in their upbringing.
The law may indeed at times be an ass. Yet clearly superior to the alternative, the chaos more and more embraced by the Democrat party, unhinged people on the far right, and our brainwashed rather than educated young people.
We continue to have a lot of work to do.
Thanks as always Bryce for your continuing efforts to shed light on liberty and the elements that would destroy it.
Katie Gates
Bryce, thanks for the great compilation of examples of 2 tiered justice or lack of justice and misapplied justice. Our Founders knew that this experiment in American exceptionalism would only work with a God fearing, moral and virtuous society and if the judicial branch remained the least important and influential branch (Federalist 78). Congress has the power to establish adn abolish a court and remove any SCOTUS justice or federal judge for bad behavior. Congress needs a little Constitutional lesson on flexing their Constitutional Arms of Self Defense against the other unruly, activist, judicial branch. Articles of impeachment have been filed against James Boasburg-finally. We also need to see 100s mor adn also pass legislation diallowing immigrants for running for office!
Ron
A brilliant and thorough, Brycism laced synopsis of the incredible decline of respect for law and order in our once great country.
I particularly liked Marcusian Linguistic Therapy Luigi Mangione…
The subject of this post is enormously important, yet totally overlooked, or dare I say purposely ignored, by the Fourth Estate.
Growing up, I fully expected the Executive and Legislative Branches to be overtly biased in their interpretation of the Constitution and our laws. However, I used to feel confident the Judicial Branch would be mostly immune from the influence of political ideology and social pressure in its interpretation and application of same. But somehow, since the “post racial” Obama regime, that confidence has been more than shaken. It’s been immolated, as activism and politics have transformed judicial application and decision making.
Indeed, our judges should be the last line of defense for guidance of our juries and the impartial application of our laws. I fear that guardrail of our democracy has been demolished, and I do not see how it will be restored.